


Behind the Storm

by inthegrayworld



Series: Storm [1]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Consensual, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fight Scene, Fingerfucking, Fucking, Gratuitous Smut, Mind Reading, Oral Sex, Rumination, Smut, Smut for everybodeh, butt stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-01
Updated: 2016-08-03
Packaged: 2018-07-19 09:33:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 14,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7355542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inthegrayworld/pseuds/inthegrayworld
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A sudden snowstorm forces Kylo Ren and Rey into a temporary truce as they seek shelter in an aristocrat's abandoned winter estate. The storm doesn't just keep them in, it keeps the rest of the world out - allowing them a small, fleeting space to forget they're meant to be fighting each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The hunt goes awry

**Author's Note:**

> Updates twice a week (or thrice, depends on how quickly I can edit the draft) until completion. Will run for 7 chapters only.
> 
> EDIT: Actually make that 8 chapters.
> 
> Sexiness begins in chapter 2.
> 
> Comments and critique welcome.
> 
> inthegrayworld.tumblr.com.

It had been three days in the snow, with her ducking from snow drift to snow drift, and him tracking the signs of her passing.

She didn’t leave footsteps, she was too careful for that. But every now and then, he’d come upon a dry cave, or the shade of a stout evergreen, and he’d get glimpses— _stupid snow_ , she’d think, her cloak tight around her, or, _I’m running low on rations, if only I knew how to hunt…_

His own hunting party had comprised himself and a squad of stormtroopers, but that was before the local wildlife decided they were prey themselves. In the forest were huge, mammalian, six-eyed, sharp-tusked, smelly things, with hides that soaked up laser fire. He’d killed three, but not before his entire troop had been gored, trampled, or bitten to death. Now, it was just him, and somewhere beyond the trees, under the gathering storm clouds, her.

He caught up with her at the end of the third day. She was standing in a glade, facing the sun. Lost in thought, he realized, as he crouched behind the moss-covered rocks.

The map put them in the outskirts of the Bounavan forest, where the nobility put up their holiday estates. But here, the flower plots were dead, the bushes withered. Over his shoulder jutted the cables and stones which were all that remained of the electrified fence that had once circled this property. The First Order’s assault on this world had been swift and terrible. She was deep in enemy territory, far from any sign of the Resistance. So why did she just stand there, among the blackened rose bushes, staring at the sun where it touched the horizon?

Now was the time to attack. He slipped his lightsaber from its holder, thumb ready over the switch. What was she looking at? Why leave herself exposed?

He told himself it wasn’t just simple curiosity—no, maybe an apprentice would make such a mistake as to delve into her thoughts out of simple curiosity. He was making sure this wasn’t a trap, that was all. Even if he found himself watching her silhouette, stone still, her shadow lengthening behind her, the light golden on her shoulders.

He wasn’t breathing. An uncomfortable warmth had sunk into his belly. Just a vestigial sense of caution, he thought.

He reached out with the Force. It wasn’t difficult, but to do so without being noticed by an adept such as she was tricky. It was as delicate as stealing a snow flake from the finest strays of the hairs on her head.

Loneliness.

She was thinking of how lonely she was. Away from her friends, and her old master—behind his mask, he smirked at the image of that old man—but she was used to this, wasn’t she?

He saw, as though they were his own thoughts, the barren desert of Jakku, saw her eating her meals alone, watching the sky, saw her vague, passing interactions with the other scavengers, the yearning for someone to really speak to, to touch—and then he was seeing his own image, in her mind.

He blinked back his surprise, but there he was, their skirmishes, the few words they had traded, there he was showing her what he looked like underneath the mask. She remembered his face quite well.

The warmth that had touched him turned into a nervous unease. He was watching her remember him, but it wasn’t with the disgust the Resistance usually reserved for the Knights of Ren. He was familiar enough with that. Her recollection was tinged by something else, something that made his grip on his lightsaber tighten and the blood pound in his ears.

She had dreamt of touching his face, with her fingers. He saw it clearly in her unknowing, unabashedly open mind. She had dreamt of his eyes and his mouth. Around the dream was a layer of doubt, as thick as the tree line around them. Doubt, and guilt.

She suddenly looked up. Knew he was there. Knew what he saw.

He was too far away to clearly see the shock on her face, but it reverberated in her mind.

She was out of the glade in the blink of an eye and he was charging into the clearing, the lightsaber alive with red energy, but something crashed into him from the side with the force of a freighter.

 

_The wildlife again_ —but that thought came later, he had already rolled into a crouch, ignoring the blossoming of pain all along his side and the touch of cold air on a fresh wound along his ribs. The creature had his blood on its tusks. _Stupid_ , he thought, distracted like a stupid novice.

It charged him again. This time he was ready, and he moved far enough to dodge the thunderous fall of its eight legs, just enough for his lightsaber to burn a line through its hide as it ran past. It trumpeted in pain, something he took no small amount of satisfaction in.

He was dimly aware of her presence - she hadn’t gone far, was probably watching. Let her watch then.

The creature circled the glade, its trunk rising and falling, centering him in each of its many eyes. With a heavy grunt, it lowered its head and attacked anew. He leapt to the side, out of reach of its tusks, but he’d forgotten the trunk - it whipped sideways, catching him full in the chest, smashing him against a tree, the blow rattling his skull through his helmet. His lightsaber flew from his grip.

_Really?_ He clenched his teeth, trying to get to his feet. After all the foes he’d killed, this is what would kill him? That would be embarrassing.

It was trumpeting again, in triumph. As it readied to gore him where he lay, he raised his hand. The creature made a noise of pained shock. It was finding that it couldn’t move at all, as though it were suddenly trying to take a step against the pressure of very deep waters.

_There_ , he thought, reading the raw fear in its animal mind. _Stay right there._ But already, the adrenaline surge through the creature’s body was making it increasingly difficult to hold. It was far larger and stronger than any humanoid he’d fought, and its fear was turning into anger.

A sudden flash of blue light came from behind it. The smell of cooked meat reached him through the mask’s filters. The creature was screeching.  
Stepping into view was the girl. Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber was in her hands, but her eyes were on him.

At the same moment, he became painfully aware of the leadeness of his arms, of just how much blood had pooled around him.

“Ren,” her voice was heavy with wariness.

He tried to stand up, but couldn’t. “Scavenger,” he said.

 

Now, he thought. He had to attack somehow. She wasn’t quite within reach, but she was distracted. His lightsaber had landed on the snow within his line of sight. It would be the easiest thing to call it to him and strike—

“You’re bleeding,” she said.

He looked down at his side, as though he’d only noticed it now.

“So I am,” he said.

She looked over her shoulder, at the tree line, at the now still body of the creature, and out towards the gathering storm clouds.

“You can’t remain out here,” she said furtively. “The oliphaunts swarm towards the scent of blood. And if they don’t get you, the storm will.”

Behind the mask, he smiled an ugly smile. “Then this is your lucky day,” he said.

She had neither moved towards or away from him. Her face was still, but he knew she was debating fiercely within herself. Why, he wasn’t sure. Until he felt her gaze piercing far too deeply, through the mask, past his eyes, into his thoughts.

She was better at reading minds now then when she had first tried it on him. But if he had learned to pick his way through thoughts, pushing and pulling as needed, she blundered her way through the walls of his mind, leaving her own intentions unguarded.

Would he attack her, given the chance?

Yes, he gave her no doubt as to that.

Would it be better to leave him here, to suffer and die?

Yes. He deserved it after all.

Should she just kill him?

He grimaced.

_You should_ , he formed the thought clearly, coldly.

She saw that, but seemed to brush it aside. She had found something else behind that thought, peeking, as she was, behind the curtain of his thoughts. She had wandered into a dark room, and found the source of the warmth that pervaded him even now.

“There’s a habitation not far from here,” she said. “It will do as shelter from the storm. I offer you a truce until it passes.”

He tilted his head to the side.

“That is unwise,” he said.

She holstered her lightsaber and reached toward him.

“It is,” she agreed.


	2. Sand storms on Jakku

The habitation she had mentioned was a collection of egg-shaped buildings nestled together against an outcropping of black rock. The foremost building had large coloured glass windows set along its upper half, and a large round door set into its belly.

Rey destroyed the lock with her lightsaber and Kylo pushed the door shut behind them, dragging a heavy coat rack down across it. Dust was heavy on the carpet and the wooden furniture, disturbed after what must have been years by their footfalls.

A short hallway led into the sitting room right beneath the domed glass ceiling. Light found its way through the snow that had accumulated on the panes, illuminating painted images of a sun right in the dome’s cap, and the stars and moons and spaceships glinting around it. Through the glass, the sky was a darkening shade of gray. Even through the walls, they could hear the wind.

 

Neither Rey nor Kylo said a word.

He saw her kneeling at the white brick fireplace, trying to initiate the burners. It still felt bizarre to turn his back on her but he needed to take care of his wounds. As this was certainly the winter estate of a local lord in one of region’s more volatile areas, Kylo easily found the armoury.

There, he found a stash of wound staunching and meds in a case next to a collection of brightly adorned spheres that at a closer look were actually hand grenades. They sat at the corner of a wall lined with rows of gold-gilded blasters of an antiquated pattern, and a museum’s worth of swords and axes with ornate handles and serpentine designs carved on the blades.

Kylo gave them little more than a passing glance. They may have been impressive for civilians, but he had been tailored for a more elegant weapon. Come to think of it, so had Rey.

He didn’t need to see her to know where she was. Her presence was like a sound only he could hear.

He knew she had walked up to the second floor of the house, exploring the rooms. And now she was back downstairs, checking the door. Now, she was passing through the hallway outside the armoury, pausing at the crack in the door, catching sight of his robes first, in a heap on the floor, then his helmet resting on a box of ammunition, and the bloody swabs in a mess near the unrolled bandages, and then himself, facing the other away, stripped to the waist, clipping shut the wound that ran down his ribs.

She was staring, he knew, at the back of his head, eye slipping over his shoulders and down the curve of his spine, while he pretended not to notice.

He tried to focus on holding the stapler correctly, ignoring the bite of the wires, aware even as he did so that the peculiar warmth had moved squarely to his groin. He felt a flash of something - an old instinct, buried deep, more deeply rooted in him than the disciplines of the First Order. That feeling of having to hide how hard he’d gotten. Notions he’d thought long dead under his schooling in the Force emerged—had she seen…? Did she notice…? The shame that welled up was accompanied by a curious, not unpleasant kind of tingling, that lasted as long as he knew her eyes were on him.

He fidgeted visibly, and suddenly her footsteps were clapping briskly down the hallway. She had reddened like a child caught doing something she shouldn’t, he also knew that.

Quietly, without even thinking, he set the stapler aside and put his hand on the bulge in his pants. He squeezed, allowing a small tremor of pleasure to course through him. He'd made her blush. _How absurd_ , he thought, stroking himself. When this truce was behind them, he’d capture her and bring her back to base. Have her bound more securely this time. No, he’d bind her himself. Maybe he’d put her in a cell somewhere quiet, away from the eyes of the First Order, of that spoilsport Hux, of even Supreme Leader Snoke. Somewhere she would welcome him with glad surrender, and if the briefest glimpse of him had made the warmth creep up her cheeks, how he’d make her burn—

A sudden numbness took hold of him, ice water flushing into his veins. With an intensity bordering on violence, he remembered himself. He pulled on his robes, his helmet, reminding himself who she was. She was the enemy. This was only a temporary truce, an ill-advised one, and tomorrow, or the day after, things would go back to the way they were. Even if—

Even if he had come upon her out on the glade, thinking of him, of touching his face. There had been a purposefulness to that touch, gentle - almost too gentle - just enough to ripple water. She had imagined her fingers passing down his cheek, his nose, his mouth.

In the armoury, he suddenly looked up, hand whipping out to catch the lightsaber that just a moment ago had stood beyond arm's reach. He had the notion someone had snuck up behind him and breathed into his ear. But he knew the foe had returned upstairs, to the sitting room. And then he realized what was happening. The image of her fingertips, right on his lips, remained clear in his mind because she was sending it to him.

Irritation flared up. Of course she knew. He may as well have been broadcasting his thoughts to her this whole time.

A vision of her face came to him, her expression softer than he had ever seen, but there was a subtle edge at the tip of her lips, something inscrutable in her eyes. This was a summons.

 

He found her beneath the glass dome ceiling, standing by the fireplace where she had gotten a decent fire going.

Her arms were crossed, her face set. He automatically checked for her lightsaber. It was on a nearby couch, together with her pack.

She had something to say, and she said it now without preface.

“You too, huh?”

For the first time in quite a while, Kylo Ren found that he wasn’t sure how to answer.

She unfurled her arms, trying not to show how nervous she actually felt. Which was doubly absurd considering the communication between their thoughts.

“It’s nothing,” he said quickly. “Just…”

An overabundance of misplaced desire? An infatuation? A mistake?

“…a moment of weakness,” he finished.

Her eyes narrowed.

“We seem to share this weakness,” she said.

He glared at her behind his mask.

“Weakness is still weakness,” he said thickly.

She shrugged. “Whatever you call it, it’s pretty distracting. Considering we’re supposed to be killing each other. Except for right now, at least.”

He turned his back to her. It was in part an old reflex, something from before he had the mask, and in part because the pleasant tightness was returning to his pants.

“Our truce holds until the snow storm ends,” he said. “Until then we will simply have to endure one another.”

“We could,” Rey said, her voice low. “Or, we could follow my idea.”

He turned his head to the side. He was listening.

“Back on Jakku, we used to have these monstrous sand storms,” she said. “Much like the storm outside right now. They’d whip up out of nowhere, rage around for two, three days, then disappear. We had a saying that sand storms were a time for secrets.”

A faraway look had come upon her face. “When you’re trapped in a hole for a couple of days with nothing to do, you do…you know. Whatever you like.”

He did not react at all, but he got the impression of being in a dark, enclosed space, with walls of beaten metal that shook against the scream of wind and sand. Light came in slivers through the holes left behind by fallen bolts, weakly illuminating a tangle of limbs, unclipped belts, and loosened cloth bindings. In the middle of the space, with barely enough room to move, a shadowed mass shuddered and moaned, only just audible over the rumbling of the walls. He caught sight of her face, eyes shut, sweat and grime thick on her brow. She stank of fear and despair, thinking these were the last few moments she would have before the shelter came tumbling down, that the last things she would experience would be this faceless man spasming on top of her, his breath hot and spiced with day-old meat, that even together with him, she would never be more alone than this.

“Anyway,” Rey said, her voice bringing him back, “The thought was it didn’t matter who you were stuck in the hole with. It could be your lover, or your overseer, or your best friend, or your worst enemy. It could be a total stranger. The sand storm created a curtain between you and the world. So trysts occurred. Affairs. Forbidden things. Secrets that were never spoken of again after the storm passed.”

She fixed her gaze on him.

“The curtain is drawn now. We don’t know for how long, but right now no one can see or hear us. Anything is allowed, even weakness.”

He ignored the pounding in his chest, and scoffed, “That is the wisdom of your backwater planet?”

That look came to her face now, soft, except for the languid edge at the corner of her lips.

“It’s never failed me before,” she said.

Kylo looked away. Something akin to panic was rising up within him. It would be the easiest thing to say yes. But a tiny bulwark of defiance remained - he could hear Snoke’s voice in his head, berating him for allowing cracks to appear through the years of discipline and restraint.

But as he turned back to her, trying to make sense of his thoughts, he saw Rey had already begun to undress.

Her vest and pantaloons were on the floor, her belt like a serpent nesting among them. Her robe was halfway down her shoulders.

For a second, the single thought in Kylo’s head was that her legs were perfect - toned, pale, stretching up to where her undergarments hugged the curve of her ass.

A hint of embarrassment touched her face, but at this point, the only way out of embarrassment was audacity.

“I just kind of assumed you’d agree,” she said.

She looked down on herself, at the broad expanses of skin, and laughed in a way that seemed to ring inside Kylo’s mind. He became acutely aware that the only thing keeping her robe from slipping away was the position of her shoulders. And underneath, she was wearing nothing at all.

“You can still say no,” she said, her cheeks lightly tinted. “Then we can go right back to enduring each other.”

Kylo’s fingers barely moved. The robe slipped, as though on its own accord, to the floor. She made no move to cover herself.

“Well,” she said, bending down, sliding her undergarments off her legs, “I’m glad we agree.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: The first draft of this fic was written while I was on a plane, while rather drunk. You can tell when the turbulence hit by how wobbly the handwriting got on my notebook. It occurred to me that if the plane went down, my last action would have been trying to describe Kylo Ren's erection (there are worse ways to die).


	3. The house breathes

She seemed to move so slowly.  
  
A thousand impressions struck Kylo Ren all at once - the lightness of her step—a bit of hair fallen across her face—the subtle bob of her breasts as she took a step forward, so close to him now—the nipples were perked up—between her legs was a fine tuft of hair touched by a glisten—and she had put the palm of her hand on his chest, and there was a wall behind him, where had that come from—she had cornered him, and he had allowed it to happen.  
  
Her hand was sliding toward his waist. Her gaze went right through his visor, and his eyes locked on to hers as she drifted downward, went down on one knee in front of him. He realized he was not breathing at all.  
  
“I guess you can consider this a sign of my good faith,” Rey said, a tiny smile on her lips.  
  
She closed her hand around the bulge in his pants, fingers curling around the hardness of it. Kylo made a noise he was fairly certain he’d never heard out of his mask’s voice processor before - a soft, tight, sigh. Her other hand had gone to his belt.  
  
She seemed to gain confidence with how hard she’d made him, busying herself with hooks and snaps and peeling through layers of fabric, while he looked down at her hair. All thought fled his mind as her grip went around his bare flesh. Her breath touched the tip of his dick. Then she began to lick.  
  
She touched the tip of her tongue to the head, flicking at it with an easy rhythm that made the muscles in his legs tense. Just as he thought he was getting used to it, she leaned her head down, covering the shaft with the broad side of her tongue.  
  
He was seized with the urge to bury his hand into her hair, but he didn’t. He wasn’t sure he could move right now, all capability of sensation seemed to have left every corner of his body and traveled down into his dick, which was now sliding past her lips with a suddenness that made him bite back a gasp.  
  
Her mouth was tight around the shaft, her eyes shut like she were concentrating on the task with everything she had. He heard the wet smack of her lips as she bent her head down to take more of him in, the grip of her hand tightening.  
  
Faintly, Kylo wondered how the ranks of the First Order would react to knowing he was getting his dick sucked by That Girl. The scavenger.  
  
Just as quickly, the thought disappeared, as he watched her head rock forward and backward, the length of his dick disappearing past the press of her lips.  
  
The build-up in his balls was growing unbearable. The strength seemed to leave his legs, but he forced himself to take the varying rhythm of her sucking, small quick bursts that almost tickled, before taking him deep, much deeper than he thought she could, creating spasms of delicious pressure before drawing away again, and then returning.  
  
He was about to come. He could feel it, the thrill of coming right in the inside of her cheek—when she suddenly pulled her head back, leaving him quite exposed, his dick bright with spit. A silver line of fluid connected it to her lips, before snapping like thread.  
  
The disappointment was staggering.  
  
“That’s as far as your good faith goes?” he blurted out.  
  
She had gotten back to her feet and stepped towards the nearby table - it was a large, circular piece near the center of the room, right underneath the stained glass sun.  
  
“Just until I get something in return,” she said, tongue touching her upper lip.

  
  
She sat herself down on the table, one foot up on the edge so he could see just how wet she’d gotten in the dark slice of flesh peering from beneath the hair. Her other foot swung in the air, her toes grazing the carpet.  
  
He followed her to the table and removed his mask. The air was cool on his face, he knew he was flushed, but he moved as though this didn’t concern him at all. She was watching. Without returning her gaze, he set the helmet down on the table beside her.  
  
He removed his coat, patted away the dust, folded it neatly and left it right beside the mask. He turned his back to her as he worked off his boots, pulled his undershirt over his head, properly slid out of his pants.  
  
She began making an impatient drumming noise with her fingers on the table, but he took his time, feeling her eyes on the scars on his back, the ones from training with the other knights, the older ones that dated back to his time at the Jedi school. And that newest scar, across his face, the one she had given him.  
  
He left his clothes in a perfectly ordered pile beside the helmet.  
  
Then without a word, he took her by the ankles, hoisted them up so she fell back against the table, her legs over her head. She cursed in surprise. He tried not to smile.  
  
Instead he leaned his head down, his fingers running down her knees, until his nose touched the warm folds between her thighs. He kissed her right where the fold closed, felt the shudder that coursed through her. He kissed her again.  
  
He realized she was trying very hard not to make a sound. Well, there was no way she would deny him that satisfaction. He parted the folds with his fingers, letting his tongue dance around the nub of her clit, going in circles around it. He could feel the nub swell beneath his tongue, accompanied by a surge of warm wetness. He could taste salt.  
  
He reached up, put his other hand on her breast, gave her nipple a sharp pinch. That made her tense up, hips lifting off the table, and he drove his tongue deep into her cunt, darting in and out. A wavering noise rose up from within her, long and deep. He traced lines up and down her clit, pressed down on it with the edge of his tongue, nuzzled his nose against it. Her thighs closed around his head, her back arching.  
  
“Ren—“ she whispered.  
  
He paused. Her fingers had strayed against his, still on her breast, and he looked up to see her face drawn with want.  
  
“I want you inside me,” she said.  
  
He stood over her, resting with his forearms on either side of her head, still tasting her in his mouth. He counted the freckles on her face while she wrapped her legs around him.  
  
He slid into her as slowly as he possibly could, watching her turn her head to the side, her teeth clenched. He swung his hips against her, the heat of her cunt closing tight around his dick, spurring him into driving deeper, faster, catching her small, sweet, whimpers like he were fucking them right out of her throat.  
  
In the stillness of the room were the sounds she was making, and him grunting in time to the steady knock of their bodies against the table. He didn’t know how long it went on, all notion of minutes and moments had faded behind the primal drive that sent him into her again and again. On the other side of the storm, there were First Order troops sweeping through fields of snow, and Resistance fighters dug into pits, and far, far overheard TIE fighters drifted through the void, but none of it mattered.  
  
He moaned as he came, deep and guttural. A moment later, she followed, sighing softly. It seemed to Kylo that the entire room breathed with her.  
  
All the energy had gone from him. He rolled onto his back on the table beside her, their legs dangling off the edge.

  
  
The light had dimmed behind the glass dome above them so it was only the sun right in its center, tendrils reaching outward, that still seemed to glow.  
  
“Storm’s getting stronger,” Rey said, breathing deep.  
  
So it was.  
  
_I can end this now_ , Kylo thought. They’d both gotten what they wanted from each other. He might still be excused for a single lapse of judgement.  
  
“Does this place have a bedroom?” he asked aloud.  
  
She pointed off to the side.  
  
“There’s one there,” she said.  
  
And she pointed up past her head, towards the stairs that went up to the second floor. “And three more up there,” she said.  
  
Kylo turned his face towards her.  
  
“Which do you want to try first?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this version of the characters, Rey hasn't really gotten a lot of cunnilingus in her life. A lot less than the amount of head Kylo Ren has received, at least. Either way, it's been a while since they've both gotten any - longer for Kylo than Rey, and this may or may not have affected their judgement. 
> 
> In-story, it is 5:00pm of Day 1.


	4. Moon room

Kylo awoke to the tug of a blanket around his legs and the smell of old sweat rising from the mattress. For a moment, he was convinced he was back in his chambers in Starkiller Base, but something was off. He automatically reached out for the lightsaber, could not find it on the bedside stand, could not find the stand at all.

Then the howl of wind came from out the windows and he remembered Starkiller Base had been destroyed. He’d just slept with one of its destroyers.

  
Dim light landed on the mural on the wall - a perfect rendering of this world’s primary moon, with all its craters and mountains labeled. Painted moonlight curled off it in smoky silver coils that stretched off across the walls.  
  
Funny how he didn’t remember seeing it at all last night. He had been entirely focused on the bed, a large, gleaming white piece of furniture shaped like an opened clam, with a gossamer curtain hanging from a ring above it. Specifically, he had been focused on maneuvering Rey onto the bed, something he had finally succeeded in doing by sweeping her up, shouldering past the curtains and depositing her onto the mattress.  
  
Now, the space beside him was empty, as though he’d just dreamt her, on her knees while he took her from behind.  
  
“You’re quite good at this,” she had said, between breaths, peering over her shoulder. He had decided he liked her hair untied, swept into the crook of her neck. So much better than those weird little buns at the back of her head.  
  
“I mean, it’s kind of unexpected—“ she had gasped at the suddenness of his push.  
  
“What was that?” he asked.  
  
She chuckled. “I didn’t think the First Order had time for loving.”  
  
He switched the rhythm, going deeper, faster, making her moan in a way that seemed to make the curtains tremble. It had been easy enough to intuit that she liked it just like that, in the last few seconds before peaking.  
  
“The First Order ensures that the needs of its people are taken care of,” he had said, taking a handful of her hair and firmly pulling it back.  
  
“And you,” he said, looking down on her face, “were clearly not as alone on that desert planet as I initially thought.”  
  
“Like I told you,” she said, her eyes hooded in pleasure, “sandstorms…” The last word had disappeared into a high, tight gasp.  
  
  
A clanging noise came from the door leading into the bathroom. Metal hitting metal. Kylo found his pants on the floor, pulled them on, and followed the noise.  
  
The moon motif continued into the powder room, with the same smoky coiling pattern across the floor tiles.  
  
Rising out of the middle of the room was a bathtub up on clawed feet. A network of exposed piping crawled along the walls, crossing through the silver filigree covering the ceiling, before pointing straight down, into the tub.  
  
Rey stood alongside the pipes, not at all looking up as Kylo entered. She had found a robe made of an expensive-looking fabric. It clashed roundly with the big rusty wrench she was using to strike the main pipe.  
  
“Stupid thing won’t thaw,” she said. “I’d switched on the heater—the house’s secondary generator needed a kicking—but it’s probably been years since anyone’s touched any of this.”

And she had done all that while he was asleep? How long was he out? A high window in the shape of a crescent moon looked out onto a stark white sky. It was _probably_ morning.  
  
Kylo turned to the tub, eyebrow raised.  
  
“You wanted a bath?”  
  
“I did,” she said with a tiny grin. “I’ve never had an actual bath, in an actual tub made just for bathing.”  
  
Kylo couldn’t quite keep the incredulity from his voice. “How could you have never had an actual bath in your life?”  
  
She had begun fiddling with the taps.  
  
“They’re not exactly popular in my corner of the galaxy,” she said. “I mean I’ve heard of them. But unless you count those times I got shoved into the happabore’s trough, I’ve never had a…”  
  
She waved a hand around, trying to find the word. “A soak.”  
  
At that moment a squelch erupted from the suspended pipes. Her eyes gleamed as water began to pour.  
  
She began sliding her robe off. “Here I go,” she said.  
  
“Just like that?”  
  
She looked up at him questioningly.  
  
Kylo sighed, thinking how just a few days ago, he would have straight up executed anyone who would have suggested he’d be having this conversation with the scavenger.  
  
“You’re supposed to wait for it to fill up before you get in,” he said, reaching beneath the taps and yanking up the plug.  
  
“I knew that,” she said testily.  
  
He dipped his fingers into the stream.  
  
“And it’s supposed to be hot,” he said, opening the second tap.  
  
While Rey watched the water rising, Kylo moved to the cabinets under the sink. He found what he was looking for among old bottles of soap and cleaning product.  
  
“Here,” he handed Rey a small, white, powdery sphere. “Drop it in the water.”  
  
“What is it?” she asked, giving it a sniff.  
  
“Just do it.”  
  
It had barely hit the water when it began to fizz, a thick stream of bubbles erupting along its circumference. The stream went from chalk white to blue, to a deep, rich purple that tinted the water in the tub. As the sphere dissipated, the overpowering aroma of summer flowers arose.  
  
Rey’s eyes were wide.  
  
The smell awakened a memory Kylo hadn’t visited in a while - of a far humbler bathtub from a time, long, long ago, when baths were a regular part of his life. Baths. Sometimes, as a treat, after dinner, still with a smidgen of blue custard on his lips. As a way to feel better after he lost at dejarik. Every night, when he was left home alone.  
  
He pushed the thoughts away before she could notice, but she was too busy lowering herself into the water.  
  
She bit her lip against the steaming heat, breathing out sharply through her teeth.  
  
“You sat too quickly,” Kylo said, at the same moment she said, “I sat too quickly.”  
  
She lowered her legs into the water more slowly, sweat beading on her brow.  
  
“I’m being boiled alive,” she said. “Why do people enjoy this?”  
  
“Wait.”  
  
“Are you actually just going to sit there?”  
  
He had settled on the edge of the tub, watching.  
  
“I have nothing better to do.”  
  
She smiled. “Are you going to join me?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Suit yourself.”

  
  
It took a minute. He observed the loosening of her shoulders, how her back relaxed against the porcelain. By and by, her eyes drifted shut.  
  
There were so many ways he could kill her, then and there. She must have known that too. And yet she lay, as though asleep, her fingers interlaced on her belly.  
  
Kylo knelt down beside the tub, so she could feel his breath on her shoulder. She did not move.  
  
He put his left hand into the lavender water, barely creating a ripple. Gently, with the edge of his fingers, he began to stroke her breast.  
  
It was as though she didn’t notice.  
  
He ran his fingertips along the curve of her breast, thumb rubbing the nipple. That made her stir, her knees pressing together, her eyebrows scrunching up.  
  
He squeezed, softness filling his palm, the nub caught between two fingers.  
  
“Stop that,” she muttered.  
  
He put his other hand against her face, feeling the taut line of her jaw. Her eyes were still shut, as though in defiance. His fingers drifted over her ear, her cheek, touching her lips.  
  
“Do I really have to?” he asked softly. “I was about to ask you to open your legs.”  
  
Heat was rising on her face.  
  
“Put your feet up on the tub,” he said, his left hand sliding back down, tracing a line past her ribs to her hip bone.  
  
She acquiesced. Her toes bumped against the white face of the tub and she settled her ankles on either edge. She sank lower into the water as she did this, her chin now on the waterline.  
  
Kylo felt the now familiar grip on his loins up to his chest. It was like a sudden wave of dizziness trying to contain the way she looked, in that position, never stealing a peek back at him.  
  
He buried his fingers in the hair floating around her mound, feeling a decidedly warmer sort of water on his fingertips. She gasped sharply when his fingers brushed against her clit.  
  
He circled his thumb around the swell, the middle finger playing where the lips of her cunt began to part. She was straining not to move her hips, with an effort that made her grip the edges of the tub with her hands.  
  
He touched the fingers of his other hand to her teeth, gently easing her jaw open. His finger was touching her tongue, the faint shimmer of spit pooling at the edge of her lips.  
  
As the tip of her tongue played against his nail, he sank the middle finger of his left hand right into her cunt.  
  
She squirmed at that, biting down on his nail. This made him smile, not that she could see.  
  
He moved his finger in and out, thumb strumming the clit, hard enough to make her wince.  
  
“Another finger?” he asked.  
  
He pulled his other hand from her mouth, gave her nipple a sharp little twist.  
  
“Answer,” he said.  
  
Her voice was low. “Another finger,” she agreed.  
  
He moved two fingers in and out of her, purposely starting briskly, slowing down, inviting her to move with a press of her clit. She began to pump her hips, pushing herself against his fingers, taking them greedily, pressing slippery heat against his palm.  
  
Around her the water sloshed, lapping up the sides of the tub, her limbs tensing. She came without a noise, just the deep tightness clenching around his fingers. He moved his wrist, fingers twisting, and the tightness began anew.  
  
A shuddering exhalation escaped her. He moved his fingers again, wondering how much he’d be able to squeeze from her until she yelled out.  
  
A third time she strained against him, before finally sinking back against the tub, breathing out through her mouth. He realized he was breathing through his mouth too. There was fresh sweat on his back.  
  
A look he’d never seen before lightened up her face - a gentle, easy smile, an entirely complete contentment.  
  
It made something shift within Kylo, something that made him flinch like he’d just heard the wrench dropping onto the tiles. The feeling that something was terribly wrong.  
  
“Well,” she had begun to say, “Now you must tell me what I can do for you—“  
  
Her voice trailed away as he disappeared out the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun things to google now includes "food in the Star Wars universe." Blue bantha milk makes blue custard.
> 
> In-story, it is now 8:00am of Day 2.


	5. Trophy room

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So word count has been ratcheting up (this chapter's in the area of 2,000), and am expecting more for the latter part of this fic. So. I've decided I'll be splitting chapter 7 into two, so that we now have a chapter 8. Chapters 7 and 8 will go up at the same time though, so watch out for that :).
> 
> In-story it is now noontime of Day 2.

The creature stared back at Kylo Ren with six unblinking eyes, dust thick on its tusks. It was once a massive beast, but now it was just a head on a wooden mount, staring. Kylo swung at it, the low hum of a lightsaber following the brief flash of red, and suddenly the creature’s head was sliced in two. The wall behind it was scorched black.  
  
The room had once been filled with stuffed game - bipedal lizards with rings of teeth, spotted feline forms in half-crouch, birds of prey, their wings spread, needle-tipped tongues coiled at the ready. Now their remains smouldered in hacked-up pieces on the floor.  
  
Kylo was not yet done. Still trembling, still seething, he stalked over to the wooden armoire and attacked, arm whipping back and forth without care or thought, until he felt he were watching from a distance the fall of wood fragments and brass fixtures.  
  
Even then, his mind churned, foaming against what had floated up from the depths. It was a knot of thoughts he didn’t want to unpick, for fear of what he might find. Tangled in it were two opposing forces, as subtle as the pervading pull towards Darkness or Light. On one hand was Rey’s face, the serenity of it in that moment right after she came. On the other end—  
  
He swung wildly towards the heavyset bed that dominated this end of the room, chopping at the footboard which was intricately carved with even more animal shapes.   
  
—On the other end was the knowledge that all this was going to end soon.   
  
One of those things gave him trepidation, and the other gave him relief, but he wasn’t sure which. The confusion had welled up before pooling, like most of his emotions did, into the river of his rage.   
  
  
He suddenly looked up, knowing with certainty that she was coming up the stairs, following the sound of things crashing. He stalked towards the door, knowing what he had to do. It was what he should have done days ago. For a brief moment, just as the knob began to turn, he felt like his old self again.  
  
He made to strike, glimpsed the look on her face as he swung outwards, lightsaber crackling—and suddenly finding that he could not move at all.  
  
It was as though he were trying to move against an incessant torrent of wind that struck him from all sides. His arm remained outstretched, the lightsaber still livid. His legs refused to budge from half lunge.   
  
She had put her robe on again. She held up one hand, fingers straining with effort. She was now as angry as he was.  
  
“Drop it,” she said, her tone clipped.  
  
His own fingers turned against him, releasing their hold on the lightsaber. It fell to the floor on its switch, killing the red beam.   
  
With an effort, he was able to speak.   
  
“This is impossible—” he said hoarsely. “—How are you doing this?”  
  
By the smallest of degrees, he felt her grip on him tighten.   
  
“I learned from you the first time we met. Remember?”  
  
She picked up the lightsaber, held it like she were considering its weight in her hand. With a sharp flick the crackling red beam reappeared.   
  
She knew how to handle a lightsaber now, that was for sure. She pointed the tip of it towards his head, the glare so bright it blinded him. He could feel the heat it emanated dangerously close to his cheek, right where the scar she had given him was.  
  
“You were going to attack me,” she said. Her voice was carefully controlled, but there was a roiling underneath it.  
  
“I was,” he said.   
  
“I should kill you for that.” The blade inched closer to his face. “I could.”  
  
Past the sizzle of the red beam, Kylo looked right into her eyes.  
  
“You _want_ to,” he said, the edge of his lip curling.   
  
She didn’t reply, but he could see he was right.  
  
“Give in to it then, if that makes you feel better,” Kylo said.  
  
For a moment, he thought she might actually do it. All it would take was a flick of her wrist.  
  
Instead she stepped back. The anger that had seemed to bleed into the air around her just a moment ago dissipated, as though she’d simply let it go. The notion was too alien for Kylo to seriously consider. He assumed that just like him, she had simply mastered herself in the moment, tucked the anger away into a well she could draw from.  
  
But she looked at him and shrugged.   
  
“I don’t think I’d like what I’d become if I did that,” she said.   
  
The words struck him, sharp and deep as the tolling of a bell. He couldn’t tell why.  
  
“Besides,” she said, “I much prefer the truce.”  
  
She switched the lightsaber off and deposited it between the jaws of some kind of mounted boar head that had slid askew on its display stand. Kylo was relieved, but he wasn’t about to show her that.  
  
“If you won’t kill me, then release me,” he said.  
  
“Not until I have your word that you won’t attack me again.”  
  
“Then you have my word.”  
  
She stood herself right in front of him, arms crossed. “Like I’ll believe that.”  
  
“Fine,” he said. “I swear it. I swear I will keep the truce on the Order of the Knights of Ren.”  
  
She raised an eyebrow. “Try harder.”  
  
“I swear it on the glory of the First Order. On the Acolytes of the Beyond. On Armitage Hux’s shiny bootstraps.”  
  
She just looked puzzled at that.  
  
Kylo sighed, spoke his next words with gravity.   
  
“I swear it on my grandfather’s name.”   
  
And she knew, just as he did, that that was not an oath he was going to break.  
  
“I believe you,” she said.  
  
Kylo tried to put his arms down, but they remained right where they were.  
  
“You do know how to undo this, don’t you?”  
  
“I do,” Rey said. She was looking at him in a way that alarmed him. “But I want something else from you first. Consider it as restitution for trying to attack me.”  
  
  
She walked a full circle around him. The gleam in her eye was quickly making him uncomfortable, all the more because she would not let him move. She was somewhere behind him now. His shoulders were tense, the muscles of his legs tingling with strain. He would have flinched—but couldn’t—when he felt her fingertip on the sutures he had given himself the day before, following them down his ribs.  
  
It awakened a prickling, not quite pain, all along his chest. He knew that struggling was futile, she had made that perfectly clear, but his reaction was still to quail against the grip that kept his arms up, his legs apart. The feeling of being unable to control his own limbs sent his blood surging. It was precisely what she wanted.   
  
She was tracing lines on his back with the backs of her fingers, following the old scars that crept around his shoulders, the gashes near his shoulder blades, the crescent at the small of his back. Something hooked onto the waistband of his pants, tugged it down, left him more exposed than he had ever felt in his life. He couldn’t shake the feeling that right behind him, she was smiling widely.   
  
There was a soft rustle of cloth, like she had reached for something in her pocket.  
  
“What. Are you doing.” His voice was a lot softer than he had meant it to be.  
  
She held something up from over his shoulder, right into his line of sight. It looked like a small bottle carved from crystal, half-filled with clear liquid. He suddenly realized what she was planning to do, and adrenaline emptied into his veins. It had nowhere to find release, except in the beating of his heart, and the engorgement of his dick.  
  
“I found this while I was looking for more of those fizzy bath pellets,” Rey said. Yes, he could definitely hear the smile in her voice. “Kind of makes you wonder what sort of people used to stay in this house, doesn’t it?”  
  
The bottle disappeared from view.   
  
“I was going to suggest this to you anyway,” she said. A cork popped from a crystal bottleneck. “Wasn’t sure how to phrase it though. Like ‘hey, ever had anything up your ass before?’”  
  
He cursed out loud, a string of virulence in three different languages he had actually learned from his father.  
  
She snickered. “I guess not then.”  
  
Her hand returned to the small of his back, her knuckle digging into his spine as she leaned in towards him, close enough for him to feel her breath behind his ear.  
  
“But you know, I think you might be just a little curious.”  
  
He had no idea if she had seen that in his mind, or if she had guessed, or was just making it up. His thoughts were in complete disarray, behind the fire burning on his face.   
  
Her hands were light on the edge of his hips.   
  
“You can tell me if I’m wrong,” she said.  
  
He very nearly told her she was. But the words died on his tongue. As she questioned him, the grip that had kept him in that position had lessened - not entirely disappeared, but he could have broken away entirely if he had wanted to. He did not. Something else was keeping him that way now, something that had far less to do with her.  
  
She landed a smack on his left butt cheek, not too strong, but still sharp enough to sting. A small noise escaped him, which revolted him the moment he made it. Tiny animals and children made such noises. Helpless things. Not him. He would not—  
  
Another sting, harder this time. The noise caught in his throat.   
  
He anticipated a third strike, but instead the whole of her hand slid around his ass, following the crest and drop of it. A smooth wet trickle followed the path of her hand.   
  
“So. Yes?” she asked.  
  
One finger slid down between the cheeks, gently probing. This was something he had never felt before.  
  
He grunted a response. The finger, slick and warm, continued to dig, making small rubbing motions, pressing against the edge of his asshole. Something strange was happening to his breathing, he was inhaling too quickly, and a low tone accompanied his exhalations. They grew deeper as she picked up how his murmurings connected to the strength of her press.   
  
“Yes?” she asked again. The way she said it sharpened the degree of sensation.  
  
He clenched his teeth. He couldn’t quite say the word. Not even out here, with all the empty walls and miles of storm between them and the world. He couldn’t bring himself to do it.  
  
The tip of her finger began making it through the oiled ring, fighting against the clench.   
  
“Give in to it,” she whispered. “You’ll feel better.”  
  
It’s like all his reserves of strength just faded. He ceased to struggle against her hold, instead relaxed into it.  
  
She plunged way more of her finger up into him than he had expected.  
  
He gasped aloud, feeling with perfect clarity the joints of her finger.   
  
But he allowed it, allowed every small twitch of her hand to reverberate through him. His nerves sang.  
  
He said something.  
  
“What’s that?” she asked.  
  
“Yes,” he said again.  
  
And now that he had said it, the floodgates broke. He said it as her finger moved back and forth, sliding through the tightening passage. He said it as her other hand crept across his waist, closed around his dick, following the length of it up and down, squeezing. He said it again, the word bursting across the room, following the stream of jizz that left a pearlescent trail across the shattered glass on the carpet.  
  
Only then did she release him.  
  
He staggered towards the wall, leaning against it like he didn’t trust his feet to carry him.   
  
He looked back at her over his shoulder. She had a look on her face like even she didn’t quite believe all that had just happened.  
  
Her smile was now a languid one.   
  
“Now,” she said, “Aren’t you happy you didn’t kill me?


	6. Blue room

It was, Kylo Ren decided, the most bizarre moment in a couple of days of increasingly bizarre moments — they were in the breakfast room, dining together. By unspoken assent, there were no weapons at the table.  
  
He had decided there was no point putting his pants back on, so he had wrapped one of the bed sheets around his waist. He still had his boots on though, the floor was cold.  
  
Before him was a porcelain bowl sculpted and painted to look like a water flower. In it was a lump of gray gruel that had been the result of re-hydrating the emergency rations he’d found in the armory. It looked and tasted like cardboard.  
  
She sat across him, now wearing the robe in a way that suggested she would be stowing it in her pack before she left. She had tied her hair back to keep it out of the jerky strips she was chewing on.  
  
They had spent the last ten minutes avoiding eye contact.  
  
Past the curtains was a blank, white glare through which the wind continued to whip. It was hard to tell if this was breakfast or lunch, if they had been sitting together for an hour or a day, or if a hundred years had passed outside.  
  
He finally broke the silence.  
  
“You continue to surprise me."  
  
She looked up questioningly.  
  
“You fell so easily to your passions,” he said.  
  
She snorted. “I just saw an opportunity and took it. I mean, I wasn’t sure I would.”  
  
She munched thoughtfully on a mouthful of jerky. “I tried to avoid leaving Jakku, but that didn’t work out. I tried rejecting Master Luke’s lightsaber. That didn’t stick either. So I decided I’d try the opposite of turning things down for a while and see where that would lead me.”  
  
She turned back to him. “Of course, I could just have easily decided to leave you out in the woods.”  
  
“So you act on your desires at will, and restrain yourself when it’s inopportune. What kind of Jedi are you?”  
  
“Who says I’m a Jedi?” she asked.  
  
That made him look up, but he did not question her. There was a lot of Light in her, but not a small amount of Darkness. Or she wouldn’t even be here.  
  
“It will cease to matter soon enough,” he said instead. “The storm’s grown stronger since last night, but I suspect it won’t get any stronger than this. It will break by tonight or tomorrow, and we will return to how things have always been.”  
  
She shrugged in response, but he sensed in her a similar push and pull of feelings. It was probably because the morning had been filled with distractions that he only saw it now - within her was that same sense of being upturned over the nebulous, jagged wish that the storm wouldn’t end.  
  
She looked at him across the table as though they both suddenly had the same thought at the same time.  
  
“It doesn’t have to return to what it was,” Kylo found himself saying. His tone was calm, but he had the sensation of running across thinning ice.  
  
A wariness had crept onto her face.  
  
“How?” she asked.  
  
“When the storm ends, you can leave here with me,” he said.  
  
“I told you before, I could show you the ways of the Force. And…this,” he gestured towards her, towards himself, “Doesn't have to end.”  
  
Even as he said it, he knew what her answer would be. But for the briefest moment he saw her teetering, as though on the edge of a cliff, looking down into the drop not because she was afraid of falling, but because she wondered what it would be like.  
  
She blinked once. “No,” she said.  
  
And he looked away.  
  
“But…” Now she seemed to be picking her words with care. “What about you?”  
  
“What about me?”  
  
“You can leave here with me.”  
  
He wondered if the same expression crossed his face, however briefly.  
  
She leaned her chin on her hand. “There is no undoing what you’ve done,” she said. “But maybe it isn’t too late. And this,” she copied his gesture, “Doesn’t have to end.”  
  
He saw that she didn’t really believe he’d agree to that either.  
  
“No,” he said. “I have been where you are now, and I didn’t care for it.”  
  
He leaned forward. “I have destroyed all trace of the Light within me.”  
  
She cocked her head to the side. “Have you really?” she asked.  
  
A memory stirred - in Starkiller Base, facing the helmet of his revered grandfather. _Forgive me_ , he had said. _I feel it again…_  
  
He rose so quickly the seat fell out behind him. If he only had his lightsaber now—if she were just anyone else—if he had not sworn not to violate the truce again—  
  
“Relax,” she said, holding both hands up. “Mother of moons, but the rumors about your temper really were true.”  
  
A thought flashed, white-hot. _What rumors?_  
  
“Let us both simply agree that the truce lasts while the truce lasts,” she said, waving him back down. “And then when the storm’s done, all this goes into a box, and the box goes under lock and key, and thrown down a hole, never to be seen again.”  
  
With an effort, Kylo controlled himself. “Agreed,” he said.  
  
A tiny smile appeared at the tips of her lips. “I just hope that hole will be deep enough that Master Luke never finds out.”  
  
“Or Supreme Leader Snoke,” he said grimly.  
  
He was suddenly painfully aware of the whistle of the wind.  
  
“There’s much to explore before the truce ends,” he said. “Shall we?”  
  
“I have an idea about that,” she said quickly. “I found a…thing in one of the storage compartments downstairs. While you were asleep.”  
  
It was not a good testament to his training that she had been able to do so much while he was unconscious.  
  
“Go pick a room upstairs,” she said, turning to leave, his eye straying to the hint of her ass just past the silken hem. “I’ll follow in a short bit.”  
  
  
There were three bedrooms upstairs. The first was the Trophy Room, still with the remains of the stuffed beasts strewn across the floor. The second was a bit too yellow - yellow curtains, rug, bed coverings, yellow fittings around a massive fireplace. The third was just right, with an impressive four-poster bed decked in deep blue, almost black, sheets. The carpet and drapes were the same color, striped in bright red. It would do.    
  
Kylo peered out the window of this room. He could make out trees in the distance, it was the only way to separate sky from ground. The storm would last another day at most, at which point the interference would clear up and the First Order would be able to home in on the tracker in his belt. And if she wasn’t far from him already when that happened, she would have to run quickly indeed…  
  
The door creaked open. Strange that he hadn’t heard her coming down the corridor, unless she had purposely crept in quietly.  
  
She made a polite coughing noise.  
  
He turned, and if it weren’t for years of conditioning against surprise attacks, his jaw might have hit the floor.  
  
She was in a dress.  
  
It was on the ostentatious side, wisps and whorls embroidered in silver thread on the gray-white fabric, the edges heavy with little flourishes of gold. It was a bit too big for her, the pearl-lined collar slipping off one shoulder and the cuffs pushed back so they didn’t cover her fingers.  
  
“What do you think?” she asked, laughing at the way the sleeves glinted. “Am I a fine lady or what?”  
  
She shuffled towards the bed, the skirt dragging behind her.  
  
“Ren?” She looked up at him curiously. “Why are you smiling like that? It’s a bit scary.”  
  
He made a motion and she fell onto the bed with a gasp.  
  
“Ren—“ she began to rise, but Kylo crossed the room and stepped onto the mattress, leaving his boot prints on the blanketing. “What the fuck are you—“  
  
“Now, now,” he said, pushing her back and straddling her, the sheet coming uncinched from his waist. “Fine ladies don’t curse.”  
  
He could smell her sweat, light and heady, through the gown. He ran his hand up the side of the bodice, feeling the embroidery beneath his fingers, and somewhere beneath that, her body squirming in anticipation. He rested his hand right on her chest, fingers settling where the collar had sagged low.  
  
Then he gripped the fabric and yanked to the side, tearing the collar all the way up to the sleeve, revealing her left breast, the nipple immediately hardening in the cold.  
  
The look on her face was priceless.  
  
“This thing probably costs more than my entire village,“ she said breathlessly.  
  
“Probably more than your entire planet,” Kylo said, gripping the tattered bodice with both hands and ripping it all the way down to the navel. Loosened threads hung in the air as the pearls flew to the floor, clattering against the wood. Sweat glistened between her breasts.  
  
He bent his head towards her neck, breathed her in, bit down hard right where her neck met her shoulder. Beside his head came a sharp intake of breath. She was quivering beneath him, taking it. His tongue swept over her pinch of flesh, tasting the salt of it, refusing to release it until she cried out, half in pain, half in pleasure.  
  
He pulled back to find he’d left a bright red mark under a veneer of saliva. The same color had tinted her cheeks.  
  
“You made an interesting noise,” he said, touching the circle of teeth marks he had made. “I’d like to hear you make it again.”  
  
She cried out, sharper this time, when he bit her right beneath the first mark, in the tender place near the armpit. Her legs kicked out on either side of him, the skirt tangling upwards to show her knees.  
  
His hand followed the smoothness of her shin, her knee, her thigh, the inside of which was moist. His fingers came away trailing wetness.  
  
The skirt was more of a challenge than the bodice. There were so many layers of it, a thickly-beaded top layer that left more pearls rolling down to the floor, a wiry fabric that stretched before it tore, a light, white covering that he left in tatters.  
  
She exhaled tightly as he drove into her, with quick, urgent thrusts. She hooked her feet behind him, pulling him deeper into the wetness of her.  
  
He pushed deep, but just as he felt himself rounding the curve of peaking, he slowed down.  
  
“What are you doing…?” she looked up, the silk and netting of the gown settling in folds through which the rest of her seemed to have burst through.  
  
“Not yet,” he said. _This doesn’t have to end_ , he had told her.  
  
He flipped her over. Behind, the dress had a huge, garish, bow that sat on the lower back. Like a present, Kylo mused, as he lifted the fabric aside, to find the smooth mounds of her ass.  
  
“You’ve had visitors back here before,” he said stroking the cheek with his knuckles.  
  
“Only the ones I really liked,” she said. He could hear the smile in her voice.  
  
“Where’s the vial?” he asked.  
  
“In the pocket.”  
  
He looked down at the mess he had made of the gown. Entire shreds of it had been flung halfway across the carpet.

“This thing had a pocket?”  
  
She helped him look.  
  
  
He had been mistaken. _This_ was the most bizarre moment of the last couple of days. He peeled through the torn skirts, following the direction her finger was raised in—‘There,’ she said. ‘Here?’ ‘No, there, where I’m pointing.’ ‘That’s just embroidery.’ ‘Look under it.’ ‘There’s nothing under it.’ ‘That’s not where I’m pointing.’  
  
She was keen to get started again, and was growing infuriated over how deliberately slowly he picked through the fabric.

"It's lost," he said monotonously. "Gone forever."

She looked at him incredulously. "Really? If you can't find a bottle, how did you ever think you'd find me in the woods?"

He shrugged. "I found you, didn't I?"  
  
“Here,” she finally said, her head propped up on her hand, her other hand digging through the skirts. It had been a secret pocket, near the bodice.  
  
There was just enough of the oil left.  
  
She resumed her position, laying her head down on the pillows, the back of the garment now down past her shoulder blades.  
  
Kylo slathered his dick with the stuff, rubbed the member between her ass cheeks, creating a pool of warmth. The bottle fell empty off the side of the bed.  
  
It took a bit of effort to force the tip of his dick through her asshole, but the press on just the tip was enough to make him moan out loud. She had reached upwards, hand clamping around one of the bars of the headboard. She was making the high noise again, a keening that tightened as he slid in deeper.  
  
_This doesn’t have to end_ , she had told him. The thought burned into his mind as he took her by the hips, pulling her back against him. The strain was visible on her shoulders, but her entire lower half seemed to just flow towards him, and away, and back again, with an easy rhythm that was quickly building the strain in his balls.  
  
For a moment, the tightness wiped all thoughts away. Ancient bodily instincts took over. He began to grind, her voice rising as he did.  
  
“Ren—“ it was a whispered word between gasps.    
  
Hearing his title brought the thought back. _This doesn’t have to end_ —But he couldn’t stop the torrent if he had wanted to. Her back crested, nails digging grooves into the bar. A long, strangled noise escaped him.  
  
_—But it will_ , he thought, collapsing on top of her. _This doesn’t have to end, but it will._  
  
She rolled him aside, her breathing heavy.  
  
She was about to say something, but the words died on her lips when she saw the look on his face.  
  
Kylo closed his eyes. The rage never rose up. He was too tired.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In-story it is 3pm of Day 2.
> 
> I’m of the opinion that even under Luke Skywalker’s tutelage, Rey won’t realllly become a Jedi like the Jedi of the Old Republic. I think that she, like Kylo Ren, will benefit from both the Light and Dark traditions of the Force. (Episode VIII can’t come soon enough, is what I’m actually saying). 
> 
> Both chapter 7 & 8 will come up at the same time, maybe within the week.


	7. Firelit room

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys, sorry updated a bit later than I thought I'd be able to. Remember, this and the last chapter are coming up at the same time.
> 
> In-story, it is now the last night.

They were pressed together on the chaise lounge at the end of the second floor hallway when there was a sudden bang from deep within the house, followed by a crump that shook the floor.  
  
Rey turned down to Kylo Ren, who was on his knees before her, one of her pubic hairs stuck to his lip.  
  
“What was that?” she hissed. “An attack?”  
  
Annoyance twisted into him deeply. He didn’t care if it was the Resistance, the First Order, the Jedi, the Sith, or more of those eight-legged abominations in the woods, he would slaughter them all for disturbing this moment.  
  
But almost immediately the temperature began to dip. The lamps set into the walls had all gone dark.  
  
“The generator,” he said.  
  
  
Rey was down in the basement a full twenty minutes before re-emerging with grease on her cheek, in the teeth of her wrench, and the collar of Kylo’s cowl which he had put around her shoulders before she had gone downstairs.  
  
On the other hand, Kylo had pulled all three layers of the Blue Room’s bed sheets out and was wearing them like a cloak.  
  
“No use,” she told him, white fog appearing out her mouth when she spoke. “Thing’s given out. What’s the point of having a holiday house if you’ll let it fall to bits anyway?”  
  
“We need a fire,” he said, using an inordinate amount of focus to keep from shivering.  
  
“The fireplaces all ran on electric burners. We’re going to have to chop some wood.”  
  
It was odd to be doing something that was neither tending to basic necessities or fucking. The large table beneath the painted glass dome easily turned into firewood under the sweeps of a pair of lightsabers. So did the chairs in the breakfast room. They worked quickly, methodically, without speaking.  
  
Out the windows, night fell quickly. There were no moons or stars, so that it seemed that the entire house had been plunged deep underground, but somehow the wind still found them.  
  
They stacked up the kindling in the Yellow Room, which had the biggest fireplace.  
  
  
The fire made a half-circle of light that seemed to turn the yellow carpeting gold. It didn’t spread as far as the bed, so Rey and Kylo made a nest of bedsheets and blankets and pillows where the light touched, marking the boundary between the illuminated area and the shadowy beyond with Rey’s pack and Kylo’s boots. Elsewhere, the house had fallen into frigid silence.  
  
Now they found themselves sitting together, fully dressed but way beyond shyness in huddling together for warmth. Rey stared at the fire, while Kylo looked furtively from the stack of irregularly-sized kindling, to the blackness beyond the curtain, to her toes, half buried under a comforter.  
  
It seemed to him that they were on unsteady ground, still standing, but a wrong step would topple them over.  
  
The exertion of bringing the kindling upstairs had drained away the heat of lust, at least for now. But there were hours left before the sun came up, and sleep wasn’t anywhere nearby. Any other interaction (any _more_ interaction, he corrected himself) threatened to expose weaknesses that could be exploited later on, when the curtain was gone and they had to return to fighting.  
  
Fortunately, it seemed they were both used to silence.  
  
Kylo leaned back against a stack of decorative pillows, his feet closest to the fire. Her chin was on his shoulder, his arm behind her back. They remained that way until what had once been the leg of one of the breakfast room’s chairs split along its length in the fire, and Rey said, “You’re wondering if he’d be disappointed.”  
  
She didn’t need to say who she meant.  
  
“Just because I’m thinking about it doesn’t mean you’re invited to pry,” he said cooly.  
  
“You were thinking it so loudly,” she said.  
  
He pushed her hair back from her face.  
  
“Do you really want to pursue this line of questioning?” he asked.  
  
“If Darth Vader had children, maybe he once found himself in a situation like this,” she was ignoring the way his fingers were tracing her collar.  
  
“He found himself stuck in a snowstorm?”  
  
“No—and stop trying to distract me.” His hand was on her hip, and trailing lower. “Maybe he allowed himself to give in to someone.”  
  
Kylo leaned in towards her, nose almost touching hers, and while she returned his gaze with steely resolve, he slipped his hand down the waistband of her pants and cupped his fingers around her crotch. That made her tingle visibly.  
  
“If he did, it was weakness,” Kylo said, finding he was saying it before he could stop himself.  
  
She bit her lip. His middle finger had slipped into her wet cunt up to the knuckle, was moving in slow circles against the tight walls.  
  
She sagged against the pillows, and he lifted up her shirt, just enough to find the inviting brown of her nipple. He opened his mouth against it, tongue coiling around the nub.  
  
“Why is it… always weakness…?” Her voice had gained a whispery quality that made him hard listening to it. The one thing that prevented him from fully enjoying this was what she was actually saying.  
  
“Maybe…” She shuddered as he sucked the nipple, spit trickling down the curve of her breast. She forced the words out. “Maybe he knew… exactly what he was getting into, and dove in without regrets.”  
  
Kylo paused, and looked up at her face.  
  
“He wouldn’t have been Darth Vader at that moment,” he said softly. “He would have been someone else.”  
  
Kylo knew enough of the story to know that the man hadn’t even been Darth Vader at the time. He had been a Jedi Knight, with a different name.  
  
Rey propped herself up, trying to find her words while his thumb pressed on her clit.  
  
“Then I guess… you aren’t Kylo Ren… right now either.” She fought down a gasp, looked him right in the eye. “So…who would you be?”  
  
He took his hand away from her cunt.  
  
“Your questions are impertinent,” he said. “Let’s have no more of them.”  
  
And to ensure this, he drew her face towards him and kissed her full on the mouth.  
  
She almost drew back in shock. This was the first time they had actually kissed.  
  
Instead, her tongue flowed into his mouth, finding his. Her eyes closed, remained so when they drifted apart, a thin bright thread connecting their lips.  
  
The flames in the hearth could have been no fiercer than the heat that surged through Kylo’s chest - it was the certainty that he had just made a terrible mistake. More terrible so when she leaned in to kiss him again, and he took it, and she was sliding on top of him, and he thought if it ended now—with this last kiss—or maybe the next one—or the next as she clawed at their clothing, fumbling for his dick—he would not hurtle past the horizon, past which there was no return.  
  
Not killing her was betrayal. Becoming her lover was betrayal. Kissing her was betrayal. And now, the thought forming in his mind, churning into unbidden life was the worst betrayal of all. He found himself inching towards it, slow and inexorable as a landslide.  
  
So who you be, she had asked. Who else could he be?  
  
He reached out to her with his mind. Her eyes widened, feeling invisible fingertips closing around her head, but she accepted it, and he brought them away from the fireside, and the darkened room, away from the screech of the storm, and the whitewashed trees.  
  
To somewhere sweltering hot.  
  
  
His shirt stuck to his back as he went down the gangplank of the Millennium Falcon. His father and his father’s constant companion, the wookie, had walked on ahead.  
  
_“You’re really leaving me here?”_  
  
His father half-turned, his brow furrowed. _“Just for a day or two. It’s a business thing.”_  
  
He turned his back on his father, hiding a scowl. His studies in the Jedi school had intensified, it had been a year and a half since he had seen his parents. Not long enough, the look on his father’s face seemed to say.  
  
_“C’mon, don’t be like that,”_ his father said. _“Look where we’ve landed. Any kid your age would give up an arm to be here.”_  
  
Even from the landing field, the noise from the town square was audible. It was as though he could already see the crowds, made up of every species he could name, filing from the gambling dens to the music bars. He knew there would be buskers playing many-necked flutes beneath the tropical trees, beside square-shaped buildings with soft, deep-colored fabrics wafting in the windows, the sounds of pleasure coming from within.  
  
_“Fine,”_ he said, heading towards town, determined to enjoy himself so much his father would be at pains to get him to leave after.  
  
He settled in the first booze house he came upon, dropped all his coin at the bar and finished off mugs of piss-colored libation until his head began to spin. He knew that it was after his sixth or seventh round that he would see her at the other end of the bar. Humanoid, violet skin, white hair, bangles up and down her arms, a wicked smile. He would buy her a few rounds, they would converse - he remembered thinking it was a fascinating conversation, although about what, he would forget, along with her name and face - and she would agree to join him upstairs, in a tiny room with a ratty bed, where he’d fuck her once before she'd flatly tell him she had to go.  
  
_“That was lovely, but my friends will be looking for me,”_ she would say, sliding back into her dress, while he tried and failed to say something that would make her stay. _“I’ll see you around Vann. I mean, Bann.”_  
  
And she would leave, and he would lay back with the blanket coiled around his leg, thinking he couldn’t be more alone if you’d dropped him into the heart of a black hole.  
  
That’s what was supposed to happen.  
  
But as he sat at the bar, reaching his sixth or seventh round, the door opened and someone new crossed to the bar, quarterstaff in hand and dressed in head to toe in sand-bleached fabric.  
  
She sat right next to him, obscuring his view of the white-haired woman. She laid her quarterstaff against the bar, lifted up her goggles and pulled down her face mask to reveal a pretty face. She ordered the same piss-colored drink he was having, but when she asked the barkeeper how much it cost, he piped up, _“It’s on me.”_  
  
She turned to him. _“And who might you be?”_  
  
He told her his name. It made her smile, a small sharp-edged smile.  
  
_“I’m Rey,”_ she said.  
  
They both knew it was impossible. When he had come to this world nearing the end of his time at the Jedi school, she was just a young girl eking a living on Jakku. But that didn’t stop her from shedding her head covering, looking now exactly as she did in the present time.  
  
She downed her drink and told him that she’d just come from off-world, traveling by herself to see the galaxy.  
  
_“Have you found anything interesting?”_ he asked.  
  
_“I might have,”_ she said, leaning her head on the base of her palm.  
  
Together, they finished a pitcher of frothy red wine while she told him that the best part of leaving her planet was she’d no longer have to deal with that pus stain Unkar Plutt and his erratic assignments of salvaged parts-to-food portions ratios, and he told her that he personally thought that the Jedi could learn a lot from the Sith, but he wasn’t sure it was something his teacher wanted to hear.  
  
Until the stories naturally dried up and he suggested there was a room on the second floor, and she leaned in against his shoulder and kissed him, and he felt his guts churn like it were the first time he'd ever been kissed.  
  
Suddenly he was kissing her, up against the bannister of the narrow staircase, with her back to the door, as the door gave way, as he tried to make sense of how to unwind the fabric across her arms and chest, as she pushed him down onto the mattress and crawled on top of him, much as she might have in another time, in another world, in a half-circle of firelight.  
  
There was a howling from out the window over the bed. Somehow, the broad-leafed trees that should have stood out on the streets were gone behind the sheet of a sudden sandstorm. He was fairly certain that the town they were supposed to be in was not even in a desert, but that hardly mattered.  
  
She sat astride him, knees down beside his ribs, and guided his dick into her. Her hips began to move, slowly at first, letting him fill into her, and she was leaning down to steal the gasps from his mouth, bringing his tongue through her lips. She moved up and down, breathing in and out with the hypnotic bob of her breasts, the full weight of her focused on the friction where they met.  
  
He rose up, clutching her by the hips, meeting her every press with a push, moving synchronized with her even as she began going harder. She was bouncing on his lap so quickly she had to hold on to his shoulders, nails digging into his skin, her mouth agape.   
  
He wanted her to say his name. The only name he would have had at this moment. At the same time, he was afraid of what would happen.  
  
The distant look of pleasure on her face gave way to understanding, her eyes suddenly sharply on his. She knew. She could do it. His name was poised on her lips, and he wanted it, didn’t want it, knew that it would bring him more joy and pain than he could take.  
  
She breathed in, aware it seemed of how tenuous a bubble they were in.  
  
Then she moaned, a high, murmuring note, her head dropping back. But in her mind was his name, clear as a chime from a piece of crystal.  
  
_“Ben,”_ she thought.  
  
The name echoed soundlessly.  
  
_“Rey,”_ he thought, in response.  
  
He cried out, so loudly it were like the only sound in the galaxy.  
  
  
She rolled off him, and the room was back in darkness, except for the puddle of light the fireplace cast.  
  
He was exhausted beyond reckoning, and so was she.  
  
She leaned toward him, her hair falling around her face. The last kiss was brief, just the lightest grazing of the lips, just enough for him to taste the salt.  
  
Sleep came easily in the silence that wrapped around them both.  
  
It seemed to Kylo that he was dreaming when he opened his eyes to find he was back in the tiny room, in that distant tropical world. But she was there too, sharing the creaking bed with him, with the blanket in tangles at their feet.  
  
They seem to have agreed that she’d join him on the Millennium Falcon, that he’d introduce her to his father and the wookie, and they’d fly around the galaxy, go wherever they pleased, until the time came for him to return to his Master, and he’d introduce her to him too. What adventures they would have.  
  
He stretched out on his back, hands behind his head. Beside him, she had shifted on her belly.  
  
She was touching his face, fingers passing gently down his nose, his cheek, his mouth. She looked sad.  
  
_“I wish it were always like this,”_ she said.  
  
Out the window, clouds passed in a red-tinged sky.  
  
_“I know,”_ he said.  



	8. Cold air, clear skies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you haven't read Chapter 7, now would be a good time to do so.

Kylo woke up first, to the silence of the house.  
  
Sometime in the night, she had turned towards him in their little nest of bedding, her hand brushing against his nose. She was still deeply asleep.  
  
He found himself drawn to just the sound of her breathing, the inhalation slow, the exhalation deep. He watched the gentle rise and fall of her chest until he realized that the reason he could listen to her breathing was because the rest of the house was far too quiet. The roar of the wind was gone.  
  
Daylight slipped through the parting of the curtains, catching dust in beams that landed warm on his skin. Despite that, a terrible cold suffused him.  
  
Kylo turned his back to her, his eyes open like the eyes of a dead animal stuffed and mounted. He remained still as stone.  
  
He counted the minutes that passed until she stirred, with a stretch and a yawn, cut short when she too realized that the storm was done.  
  
He did not say a word, did not budge, even as he heard the tell-tale metallic clink of a lightsaber being brought to hand. It was the first thing she had reached for. He could feel her eyes on the back of his head, waiting for him to make a move. He didn’t, although beneath the blanket, his hands were in fists so tight his nails were drawing blood on his palms.  
  
She arose, shuffled into her clothes, her breathing now agitated. He heard the quick, sharp movements of her pulling on her shoes and drawing up her pack.  
  
He thought she might say something, but what was there to say? She might have said good-bye, but their paths would inevitably cross again.  
  
She hesitated at the door. He knew she was still looking at his back. Maybe waiting to see if he’d do something after all. Or maybe she just wanted to remember what he looked like. All of a sudden she was gone, slipping out into the corridor, her footsteps light down the stairs.  
  
He imagined her reaching the front door of the house, pulling it open to let in the cold morning air, and disappearing into the white.  
  
  
He sat up slowly, aware that her warmth was still beside him. He remained that way for a while, eyes on the dying embers in the fireplace, as he brought himself into a state of meditation.  
  
He had meditated many times before, it was one of the crucial skills he’d learned from Master Luke, and harnessed under the tutelage of Snoke. Now he silenced his mind, willing the throbbing in his chest to slow, breathing just as she did, slow and deep.  
  
In that state, close as he could come to tranquility, detached from the pain in the palms of his hand, he took his memories of the last two days as though they were silk ribbons, and calmly tore them to shreds.  
  
He knew what she sounded like drawn up in pleasure beneath him, knew the topography of her body and her smile, but all these he separated from himself. He remembered that he was alone, that he had ensured his loneliness the moment he had stepped away from the Light, that this was just the continuation of the path he had chosen to walk.  
  
By the time he was done, the space beside him had cooled, but he had found the strength to rise again. There was no regret. Not even rage. In fact, it was as though he could feel nothing at all.  
  
  
He found his mask along with his cowl and boots. Funny how he had forgotten all about it. Back behind the visor, the house took on a darker sheen.  
  
He ignored the mess they had left behind in the second floor rooms, the walls which bore witness to all they’d done. They, and the tables, and the bed sheets, and the bathtub, and the fireplace all went into a cave deep in Kylo’s mind, and a boulder rolled over the entrance.  
  
He stepped into the armory where he easily found what he was looking for.  
  
  
The house went up in a terrific series of explosions that belched fireballs up into the sky, and sent forest birds screeching for miles around.  
  
Kylo watched from the nearby hill. He crushed the detonator in his hand and let it fall to the ground. Overhead the sky was an unforgiving shade of blue, bereft of clouds.  
  
He wasn’t surprised to hear crunching through the trees behind him, the uniform stomp of a stormtrooper squad marching together.  
  
“Sir,” Captain Phasma’s voice came from behind him. “We’re elated to find you well, the storm had scrambled all communications.”  
  
He turned his head to the side, which was all the acknowledgement he was going to give them.  
  
“We believe the scavenger is still in these woods,” she went on. “But our scout parties have lost track of her.”  
  
Kylo reached outward with the Force. He could feel her presence - she hadn’t stopped running, was darting from shadow to shadow, looking over her shoulder. But when he tried to look into her mind, it was like touching a cold, steel wall. Which was how it would be from now on.  
  
He pointed in the direction she was going. There was a few miles between them already.  
  
“That way,” he said. The hunt resumed.  
  
  
  
  
  
END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's all there is, there isn't any more, although if Episode VIII provides more Reylo fodder (I'll settle for "they're not blood related"), then I will write a sequel.
> 
> If you've made it this far, then many many thank yous for reading this fic. Huge appreciation especially for the readers who came in way back during Chapter 1 and persisted through a weird update schedule, and the people who left their comments along the way. I hope you all enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing this thing :).
> 
> EDIT: Yeahhh changed my mind, the sequel 'In the Middle of the Blue Ocean' is up now :)


End file.
